Halls of Splintered Souls (Wandering Souls #1)

Chapter Twelve

"What the hell, Aya? What were you thinking?" Ayn shouted as she burst into my room that afternoon.

Padma was already gone by the time I exit the shower, so it was only the two of us. I groaned knowing that Ayn was going to chastise me for being irresponsible. She meant well, but nobody likes being lectured.

"I'm sorry, okay?" I told her, laying my head on my pillow.

"I mean you're capable of deciding what's good for you, and I know that you can sometimes be impulsive, but what the hell?" Ayn rambled, all the while handing me various snacks. She must have known I hadn't eaten anything.

"I guess it was the lunar eclipse that made me want to go despite knowing that it was a stupid idea."

Ayn momentarily froze, then sighed. She must have finally realized why I risked it the other night. She looked nervous all of a sudden, as if she just remembered something. I raised my eyebrow in a question.

"I guess you investigated after all." She fumbled with her bag and took out a book from it. "I kind of did too."

I eyed the book curiously, then gasped. It was a spirit grimoire. I've never seen a grimoire like that before. It has an odd smell to it. The magic was so uncommon that the scent was unfamiliar to me.

"Where did you get this? Adrien?" I asked her.

"No..." she trailed off, looking down at her lap, "it was in Professor Cain's office."

I stared at her in horror. She did not. If she did what I thought she did, I might kill her.

"You stole it?" I asked her, panicking.

"I'm going to return it! I'm just borrowing!" She defended, huffing in annoyance.

I shook my head as she opened a page in the grimoire and laid it open on the bed. It was written in French. I groaned and immediately regretted taking my French lessons for granted. I paid little attention to French and learned Korean instead. Roman language was not my strong suit, but it was Ayn's.

"See, right here it says Les espaces des Rêves." Ayn pointed to the page and I moved closer to see.

"The space of dreams?" I asked her.

"Yes, it explains how in there are three spaces in each person's dream that they could enter: their own dream space that exists within themselves, other people's dream space, and the spirit realm. Remember that dream we had? I'm guessing that I somehow entered your dream space," Ayn explained.

"Wait, don't you usually have really vivid dreams?" I asked her, remembering all the times she told me about her dreams.

"That's what's scaring me, lately my dreams have been really odd." She bit the insides of her cheeks. "You know how I occasionally dream about that guy? The one that I said never use the same face but I just somehow always knew it was him? Well, lately I've been dreaming about him every night and I'm beginning to think that he's not just a figment of my imagination. I know it sounds crazy but... it just felt so real, you know?"

It hit me that I wasn't the only one who has been experiencing strange happenings here. Ayn was too. I wasn't sure if I should tell her everything before, but now I think this might all be connected somehow. I felt like the answer was there in front of us, so why was it so hard to find it? Maybe if we had tried to solve it together, we'd figure it all out faster.

"That night I went to the party, I saw the boy from the dream." I took deep breaths to calm myself. "I had... a vision, I think. I don't know. But I saw him."

"So... what you're saying is somehow we dreamt of something that happened years ago." She went quiet before finally continuing. "The question is how and why."

I shrugged looking at the images in the grimoire when a thought hit me. "Is there anything here about souls?"

"Yes, of course. There's a section that explains how our souls could travel to the spirit realm when we dream. I think a lot of people try to enter but very few, if any, succeed. And in the spirit world we could supposedly talk to the souls of those who has..." Ayn trailed off, realizing what I wanted to try doing.

"We could try that, you know. I think you might be able to do it. I think you have done it without realizing it."

Ayn sighed, seemingly in a denial about the whole thing. Ayn and I both suspected that there were more to her dreams than meets the eye. Nothing ever confirmed it, though, so she just dismissed that she just had an overactive imagination. But a few times, she told me that she dreamt that she was somewhere and somehow, she just knew that the people in her dreams knew she did not belong there. This was her chance to find out about her dreams and for me to find out about what's truly happening and why it was affecting me.

"I don't know if I could do it," she finally said. "We're talking about purposely entering the spirit realm, not just visiting another person's dream."

Spirit magic is no longer commonly practiced nowadays. Those who do are often deemed to be impostors. No one believed séances are real, or tarot readings, or astral projecting. Even in Arce Umbra, spirit magic is only taught as a theory. It just occurred to me how odd it was that Professor Cain owned a spirit grimoire and kept it openly in her office. I assumed that such knowledge would be highly coveted by a lot of people.

"I know it's risky," I began, then asked, "but aren't you curious?"

"If it's true that I've been in the spirit realm and it's how I know it to be, then we won't just find human souls there. There'd be things that even the most advanced living conjurors never talked about," she told me nervously, "maybe there's a reason there are so few surviving records of spirit magic."

She was right. The fact that spirit magic is almost extinct was odd. Conjurors kept so many records of other elements and branches of magic. It was unnerving how spirit magic seemed like a myth. Maybe it really is a myth. Or maybe... it was purposely erased for a good reason.

"So, we're not doing it?"

Ayn looked at me. "Oh, we are. I'm just trying to figure out a way to make sure we'd be able to wake up."